I like to rely on Java EE dependencies whenever possible when deploying to an application server. Unirest and its transitive dependencies add about 2MB to the WAR. Whether or not that 2MB is justified depends on the project, but as Adam Bien has pointed out (http://www.adam-bien.com/roller/abien/entry/ears_wars_and_size_matters), the smaller the WAR, the faster the deploy.